Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Tiny athletes

Marcus is continuing to enjoy Little Athletics. He's got another batch of badges for me to sew on in my endearing wonky way. This evening we attended an evening meet for the first time, kicking off at 5.30. It was very pleasant down at the track, after a stuffy sort of hot day. The club meets down by Long Beach, and there is usually a sea breeze.

I had to take Michael with me, and had anticipated some trouble keeping him out of the long jump sandpits and out of the path of javelins and discii and so on. He surprised me by being very interested in the actual competitions taking place, and awfully keen to run, run, run everywhere. Not madly like a toddler, but purposefully, like a runner. "Dad, I'm going to run over to that black thing and back!" "Dad, I'm going to run over to that red thing then to the black thing and then back!" etc.

His moment arrived with the toddler race. He announced "I'm going to win this race because all the rest are just little kids". I felt a bit guilty as he is nearly five, and there were a few two year olds taking part. I was assured that if he's too young to register for Under 6, then this is the race for him. He streeted the toddler field, and was very, very proud. We've realised in recent years that he is an excellent runner, and he looked great streaming down the track. When the big kids had finished he had a go at the discus as well.

Meanwhile in the deadly serious world of the Under 7s, Marcus did two personal bests in a row in the long jump, ran a terrific 2nd in the 150 metres, and just outside his personal best in the 100m. So we had fish and chips to celebrate.

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